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20 – The Bloodline Moves

20 – The Bloodline Moves

The discovery of the assassin’s corpse was a significant issue in many ways.

Who killed the assassin was not really the main problem.

There were some expected suspects, and everyone believed that I had caught him with a knife in my sleep.

The real problem was, “Who sent the assassin?”

Even in a medieval world where killing was commonplace, there were lines that should not be crossed.

Assassination was the most heinous act that all lords detested, and if one attempted an assassination and got caught, that lord would become a common enemy, facing attacks from surrounding lords and ultimately facing ruin.

Assassination was that dangerous, and even the family most specialized in it, the Black Rose Family, had only a few recorded instances of successful assassinations in the original story, and they had never been caught until the very end.

Given such circumstances, it was no surprise that the castle was in an uproar, and Hart was furious, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“It must be those lion bastards! Those crazy lions have finally crossed the line!!!”

“Calm down, Hart.”

Hart, who had been most suspicious of the Lion Family due to their recent troubles, shouted loudly.

While I understood Hart’s feelings, it wasn’t the Lion Family, so I tried to calm him down.

Hadem of the Lion Family was “trash,” but he was a “warrior.”

He enjoyed killing his enemies with his own hands, so he wouldn’t have resorted to sending an assassin to deal with me.

While I was calming Hart down, Noah also spoke up.

I expected the calm Noah to say something to soothe Hart.

But instead…

“I don’t know who the bastard is that aimed for the lord’s life, but I will chase him down to the ends of hell and take care of it. So don’t worry, my lord.”

“Th-thank you, Noah.”

Noah smiled with a terrifying look in his eyes as if he were about to kill someone, and for the first time, I averted my gaze from Noah in fear.

Before I knew it, the situation had turned into me trying to calm my retainers, and I thought about how I wanted to get out of there quickly.

At that moment, the door opened like a savior.

“My lord.”

“Sharen! Has the autopsy finished?”

I had called for Sharen to investigate the assassin’s corpse.

I felt that with Sharen’s knowledge, she might be able to uncover more information from the assassin’s body.

Sharen was not wearing her usual robe but a black autopsy suit that covered her mouth, and with a very serious expression, she spoke to me.

“I believe you should see this yourself, my lord.”

“Me?”

My retainers and I headed to the autopsy room.

There lay the dead assassins.

They appeared to be robust men in their 30s to 40s.

Looking at them like this, they really did seem like they belonged to the Lion Family.

“At first, they looked like ordinary corpses. But the residual magical power was so unusual that when I traced it back…”

Sharen placed her hands on their corpses and began to chant something.

Suddenly, a red light emanated, and noise began to occur around the assassins’ bodies.

And then…

“What is this!?”

The human forms of their bodies vanished, revealing another appearance.

With black skin and long ears, they resembled dark elves, and I recognized this appearance as a race from the World Archive.

“Blood Clan…”

The Blood Clan, who serve the sealed demon Dantalion at the northern edge, are a race positioned similarly to the magical beings of this world.

I didn’t know their exact purpose since I hadn’t seen the ending where their goals were revealed, but at least I knew what their aim was.

Their goal was to “weaken the empire,” and to achieve that, they caused various problems like assassination, intrigue, and terrorism without rest.

But why were they targeting me?

With princes, princesses, and many other lords around, why me?

As my mind became tangled, Lana suddenly interjected.

“I felt something strange about their appearance, and it turns out they were Blood Clan.”

“Whoa!”

“Lana! When did you arrive?”

“I was behind you the whole time, Noah.”

We were all surprised by Lana’s silent emergence from behind.

She had been there the whole time? I hadn’t felt her presence at all!

“More importantly, Sharen, I learned that the Blood Clan is a fanatical group sealed by a barrier in the northern wastelands. Why would they come to our territory?”

“I don’t know either. There hasn’t been any news of the Blood Clan invading from the Magic Tower.”

The Blood Clan was fundamentally sealed by a barrier in the northern wastelands.

So, I hadn’t been particularly concerned since there hadn’t been any events where the barrier partially opened until the mid to late stages.

In the midst of such questions, Noah spoke up.

“Speaking of which, I heard that there was news of a partial opening of the barrier in the north and a clash recently.”

“The barrier opened partially!?”

What the hell! Why was it already opened!?

Noah looked at me with a genuinely apologetic expression.

“Yes, it wasn’t a large opening, and it was quickly suppressed, so I heard it wasn’t publicly announced, but to think that the Blood Clan that invaded there would come to assassinate you, my lord… I was too careless.”

“This isn’t your fault, Noah.”

Right, this wasn’t Noah’s fault.

Who would think that I would be assassinated the next day just because a sinkhole appeared in a neighboring town? It was that level of absurdity.

After the autopsy was completed, the situation was summarized as follows.

First, Hart decided to inform the system about the appearance of the Blood Clan assassin.

I was lucky to have survived, but I didn’t know if other lords, nobles, or members of the imperial family would become their targets.

We would strengthen the castle’s defenses, and Noah would procure materials for magical tools so that Sharen could set up a detection barrier equivalent to the imperial palace.

I opposed the idea of using magic to monitor the crisis situation of key figures, as I thought it would be able to detect even during happy times, but I had no choice but to accept it due to the fervent push from Noah and Hart.

“Ugh… what is happening…”

Once I was finally left alone in my office, I sighed.

This was because the timing of the Blood Clan’s appearance I knew was too different.

For them to come for my head when they should have only appeared years later sent shivers down my spine.

The bigger problem was that this was likely just the beginning.

The Blood Clan caused various chaos to weaken the empire.

Among those, there were cases where they used assassination not just for killing but to incite political conflict.

It was a method of benefiting a specific faction through assassination, then sowing discord between the two to make them fight each other to mutual destruction, much like a borrowed knife murder.

When I first experienced that strategy, I had been furious.

I hoped that I wouldn’t have to go through such an experience again as I fell asleep.

The territory of Dreyhart, located in the southeast of the empire.

It was the most unusual city in the empire.

In a typical territory, the ratio of slaves was at most about 20%.

But this territory was different.

In Dreyhart, a staggering 80% of the population were slaves.

This situation arose because of the “Colosseum (Slave Arena).”

Dreyhart was a city that had no special products.

Because of that, it was very poor, and while pondering how to solve this, the first lord of Dreyhart came up with an idea.

It was to utilize the war slaves, who were the only abundant resource in Dreyhart at the time.

The lord of Dreyhart knew that people loved to show off their slaves.

So he built an arena and set up a “Slave Duel Tournament” where owners could prove the strength of their slaves through combat.

Owners eagerly entered their slaves into the tournament, and those seeking thrilling spectacles flocked to the arena.

In no time, Dreyhart became the most famous site for slave duels in the empire, earning a tremendous amount of money from the large audience.

The problem began from that point.

The lord of Dreyhart, having profited from slaves, began to foster and manage the slave industry intensively.

To avoid the imperial law that allowed anyone with a free citizen parent to become free, he made sure that slaves could only marry other slaves and mandated that they have many children.

Moreover, he began to breed slaves like dogs or cattle, creating superior slaves to form an army and even starting a mercenary business by sending them to other territories for a fee.

After 300 years of this practice, the population of Dreyhart had become 80% slaves.

The 20% of free citizens could control the 80% of slaves thanks to magical tools.

The first lord of Dreyhart also knew that if the number of slaves increased too much, the risk of rebellion would grow.

So he made a special request to the Magic Tower, resulting in the creation of the “Purple Chains,” a magical tool that weakens the wielder’s power to that of a child when the owner desires it, which became a symbol of the empire’s slaves.

Using this magical tool, the nobles of Dreyhart had oppressed the slaves and believed they could continue to do so.

Until now.

Then one day, it happened suddenly.

“Huh? Who’s there!”

Swish-!

“Huh?”

Assassins who infiltrated the city through the darkness began to kill the mages managing the Purple Chains.

Since the Purple Chains were magical tools that consumed magical power, they required the management of mages, and dozens of mages were spread throughout Dreyhart.

But all those mages were killed overnight.

With all the mages who supplied magical power dead, the Purple Chains lost their power, and the slaves regained their strength.

“What… what is this?”

“Even with the chains on, my strength isn’t disappearing!!”

As the slaves realized that their strength was returning despite wearing the chains, chaos erupted.

The empowered slaves easily destroyed their prisons and began killing the free citizen soldiers who had oppressed them.

And at the forefront was him.

“Stop them! Block the slaves!!”

“Block me? What a joke!!”

With a physique one and a half times that of an average person, bursting muscles, and blue horns protruding from his head, he charged at the free citizen soldiers trying to subdue him.

The soldiers tried to stop him with spears, but ordinary spears couldn’t pierce his skin, and instead, they were knocked back by his charge.

His name was Jarha Regon,

A descendant of the Dragonkin, born between dragons and humans in ancient times, and a monster who had never lost in the slave arena.

He advanced, slaughtering the soldiers trying to stop him with his bare hands, and finally arrived at his destination.

Bang-!

“Yikes!!”

As he broke down the door, there he was.

The current lord of Dreyhart, Sorahn Dreyhart, was hiding in his room, unable to flee from the sudden rebellion.

But no matter how sturdy the door was, it was nothing more than cotton to Jarha.

Jarha entered the lord’s room.

It was a splendid chamber made of dazzling gold and silver, and the slaves who entered with Jarha for the first time were at a loss for where to look.

“Y-you insolent fools! How dare you enter this place!!”

Sorahn shouted loudly, facing them.

Jarha approached him without flinching at his words.

“Hey, my lord, don’t you have something to say to us before you spout that nonsense?”

“S-something to say!?”

Jarha recalled his life up to that point.

Before he could even speak, he had been separated from his parents and subjected to hellish training and abuse.

Then he was forced to participate in the slave arena against his will.

And there, he survived by killing his comrades, who had been like friends to him.

The reason he endured all of that was for this moment.

“Apologize. To me, everyone here, and to my dead friends!”

“A-apologize!? Ha! Don’t talk nonsense! An apology is something a human gives to another human.”

Lord Sorahn had learned this since childhood.

Slaves were not humans like them.

The position of the lord of Dreyhart was to become a god to the slaves.

He had lived his life learning such teachings from his father.

To him, Jarha’s words sounded so absurd that they could even make him forget the fear of death.

“I am your god! Gods do not apologize for such things!”

And his words were also enough to shatter whatever reason remained in Jarha.

Jarha approached the lord and said,

“If you’re a god, then try to block this.”

Jarha swung his fist at the lord.

The punch, filled with the anger of Jarha’s 30 years of life, was like an exploding meteor, falling upon an ordinary human.

It was obvious what would happen after a meteor fell on a bare human.

Bang-!

Crack!!

With a single punch from Jarha, Sorahn was reduced to ground meat, smashed against the wall.

Seeing that, Jarha spat out the resentment he had built up over the years.

“Hmph! A god is a weakling.”

Thus, a rebellion broke out in the slave city of Dreyhart.

A word from the author (Author’s note)

To the anonymous supporter!!! Thank you for your support!!!!!

I will work even harder!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone’s interest, I have risen to 2nd place in the contest rankings!

It feels like a dream!!

I will repay you with even better works!!

Thank you for reading today!!!